Sentence Correction

Based on the Manhattan SC guide and various posts on forums, I understand that the following forms are correct for DISTINGUISH:
- DISTINGUISH X FROM Y
- DISTINGUISH BETWEEN X AND Y

However, I found that in OG12 #51, the correct answer actually contains a version of the 'DISTINGUISH' idiom that is incorrect according to all the sources I've looked at.

It's in the form of 'DISTINGUISH X AND Y'.

Here is the question:
A new study suggests that the conversational pace of everyday life may be so brisk it hampers the ability of some children for distinguishing discrete sounds and words and, the result is, to make sense of speech.

A) it hampers the ability of some children for distinguishing discrete sounds and words and, the result is, to make
B) that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words and, as a result, to make
C) that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words and, the result of this, they are unable to make
D) that it hampers the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words, and results in not making
E) as to hamper the ability of some children for distinguishing discrete sounds and words, resulting in being unable to make

OA: B

I know that the correct answer actually hinges more on another idiom (ABILITY OF X TO Y vs ABILITY OF X FOR Y), as well as on parallelism.

It seems that in the absence of the idiom 'DISTINGUISH BETWEEN X AND Y' in all the answer choices, parallelism trumps the idiom in this particular example.
Does it have anything to do with the fact that DISTINGUISH is in Infinitive form in this example?
Any expert care to shed some light onto this?

Hey, I'm no expert, but I have an idea of what you are referring to.

In this particular example, the word distinguish is not used in the sense of comparing 2 entities, but in its absolute sense of meaning "to be able to hear, see, smell, or taste something clearly"

This is a rather formal usage of the word, but things like this could pop their head up on the GMAT. However, just as you so astutely identified, there will be other "killer" aspects to the sentences that will lead you to the correct answer, even if you did not catch this one thing.

Here, rather than distinguishing X and Y, we are simply distinguishing X, where X is the compound "discrete sounds and words". This is intended to mean that the children's ability to identify these sounds and words clearly has been hampered. Thus, there is no comparison.

The infinitive form is not particularly pivotal here. You could very well have "to distinguish X from Y" or "to distinguish between X and Y" in a sentence. Similarly you could have a sentence like this:

"I could not distinguish her face in the darkness."

It's all about context. I would rely on the original sentence to indicate whether or not a comparison is intended.

Hope that helps!

The word distinguish has more than one meaning.

To distinguish X from Y and to distinguish between X and Y mean to discern the difference between X and Y.

To distinguish yourself means to do such good job that you separate yourself from the rest:

You really distinguished yourself on the GMAT = you did a great job on the GMAT.

To distinguish X means to discern X (to be able to separate X from everything around it so that you can perceive it clearly).

In the SC above:

the ability of some children to distinguish discrete sounds and words = the ability of some children to discern the different sounds and words.

Hope this helps!

Thank you to both of you.

I kind of get it now. I guess the test writer used 'distinguish' that's synonymous with 'discern'.
The fact that they have two items, i.e. 'discrete sounds' and 'words', separated by the conjunction 'and', made me second-guess myself after picking that answer.